Asking Don Prudhomme about retirement seemed like a good idea at the time this article was assigned. Not until driving down the Pacific coast to Snake Racing's headquarters complex did the possibility of encountering a coiled Snake occur. After all, one of the most successful, most intense drag racers of all time had just been shut down by the only opponent he hadn't been able to outsmart, outdrive, or outhorsepower: the cost of racing a fuel car without multimillion-dollar sponsorship.

2/18The earliest of these mint-condition jackets dates back half a century to Don's first 150-mph pass at San Fernando Drag Strip.

Worse, only two months earlier, the 50th Winternationals had been just the second he'd missed since nitromethane was allowed in 1963, and the first since 1986, the season he sat out after failing to find a backer. Missing Pomona must've been particularly painful for the man who dominated Top Fuel at the fifth Winternationals in 1965, driving the Hawaiian, then returned to win nine more Pomona events as either owner or driver. Would questioning such an intense, proud racer so soon after a 50-year career ended be akin to pulling the tail of that scary cobra with the bared fangs in the famous Snake logo? Would this be the shortest interview in the history of HOT ROD?

Although Don has willingly granted interviews to this former Lions Drag Strip reporter since the late '60s, those circumstances were nothing like this. Thus did I walk through Snake Racing's glass front door somewhat anxiously, seeking some sign of how this job would go. First to welcome me was General Manager Skip Allum, warmly, while multiple dogs barked out greetings from someplace upstairs. As Skip led the way up the steps, he assured that Snake and the dogs would be happy to see me-so far, so good. At the top of the stairs was a suite of offices and seven dogs, some quite large. No sooner did I hear Lynn Prudhomme's voice holler something like, "Don't worry, they're all bark!" than the smallest one charged out of the pack, leaped through the air, landed on my shoe, and bit my ankle. "Gulp!" went the writer.

3/18Ralph Whitworth's decision not to construct the America's Car Collection museum in Winnemucca, Nevada (see HOT ROD, Feb. '10), worked out great for his buddy Don, who got first crack at buying back most of his '70s, '80s, and '90s Funny Cars-all of which had already been restored to running condition for Ralph by Don's longtime crewman, Willie Wolter. Even the internal components are period correct. John Buttera built the '71 Barracuda (middle) and the '74 Vega (foreground), Don's first Army car. Pat Foster built the Arrow that won back-to-back Winston world championships in 1977 and 1978.

Happily, this would be the only bite inflicted in two days in Vista, California. The only Snakebites I witnessed took the form of friendly jabs from a hall-of-fame ball-buster, mostly directed via cell phone to friends delivering 69th-birthday wishes-including at least three whom he's fired: former crew chiefs Bob Brandt and Roland Leong and former driver Tommy Johnson. Other folks may be surprised to learn that, away from the track, this Don Prudhomme is a funny, mellow, laid-back fellow. If retirement is killing him, Don must be the best actor in the world, because even his wife of 47 years and daughter of 36 years are fooled.

"I think he's doing pretty well," Lynn says, making no effort to conceal her surprise and relief. "When he retired from driving [1995], I went, 'Oh, my God, this can't be!' I really thought it would affect him, but Larry [Dixon] did a good job right away in the car, and Don loved not having that responsibility, along with having to run the team and take care of the sponsors and fans. I'm hoping this is going to follow the same course.

4/18Don, 69, and Lynn, 68, met at Van Nuys (California) Junior High. "She had a great body, even at 14!" he exclaims-and goes on to describe the long skirt she was wearing on their first day of art class. "I was interested, and she wasn't. She went out with my friend instead." Daughter Donna's first job was selling T-shirts at the track 25 years ago. She has since assumed many of her folks' responsibilities and still sells apparel through SnakeRacing.com.

"I think if Tom McCourry was still around, this year would be a breeze," she adds. "Tom passed three years ago, and it's still painful for Don. They were best friends since they were 12. It's just not the same."

"Oh, yeah, Dad is doing a thousand times better than we thought he would," according to Donna, the couple's only child and lifelong Snake Racing employee (except while away at college earning a psychology degree). "He really walked away from it and didn't look back. I think he's almost upset it's not bothering him more. It was just so painful for so long. It wasn't like we had one bad year, and it wasn't the sponsorships; it was trying to get the teams to work together-which never happened-then driver issues, crew chief issues, and the anxiety of all that. The joy's been gone. Mom and I could see it in his face: the teeth clenching, the dark eyes. It wasn't just affecting him. My hairdresser told me I was losing my hair!"

Her father tracks the beginning of the end back to the early '90s. "The fun started going out of it toward the end of my driving career," he recalls. "When I was tuning and driving it myself, that was the most fun-when you could get out of the car at the end of a run and know exactly what you had to do to make the next one better. I think Garlits would say the same thing. When I started having people tune the car, it wasn't as much fun. All of a sudden, I was just a driver.

8/18Firesuits gradually gained more layers and protection during the '70s. From the scars left on this one, it looks as though the driver needed every bit of its flame resistance.

"I became even more distant from the operation after we moved it to Indiana. It gets to where you become like a pop machine: You take a dollar bill, you stick it in a machine, you get a drink out. In other words, I just put money into it. I became very removed from the performance side of the car. My interests were more into bringing in money and taking care of sponsors, and things were changing fast: 'Oh, look, a big-ger fuel pump just came out, a new set of heads, we gotta have this billet blower!' You need clutch engineers, blower engineers, bright people to run your CNC machines.

"The car owner still looks at the computer, but he's not really close enough to it to make an educated opinion," he explains. "So you become a spectator. You are the warden, but the prisoners really run the prison. We went through periods where, if the crew chief was in a bad mood one day, he'd threaten to quit and take your tune-up with him. He's kind of got you by the balls, you know? We had Top Fuel crews who didn't like our Funny Car crews. My job became managing employees, signing autographs, and finding money for the team. The part I still enjoyed was the performance. I wanted the car to run good, but I didn't know how to make it run good. See, when I ran good before, I knew how to do it."

9/18To illustrate how technological challenges have multiplied since he started racing Funny Cars, Don raised the bodies of his '71 Hot Wheels 'Cuda and the '07 Chevy Impala driven by Tommy Johnson...

Don accepts a fair share of the blame for the expensive transition that ultimately forced him out of the game after half a century of playing it well. "I'm one of the guys who went out and found millions of dollars to put into the sport, so I'm as guilty as the rest. It became a different sport, but it was a sport I'd always envisioned, that I wanted it to be. I wanted to wear a nice, white shirt instead of a greasy T-shirt. I wanted my operation to be bigger and better every year. To get all that, you can't just want it, you've got to promote it and make it happen, get the respect of companies to come in and sponsor a sport. If you plan to keep sponsors, you'd better have the best equipment and the best people you can get. That takes a lot of money.

"If the sponsor thing doesn't happen, you want to continue, sure, but you have to be willing to spend your own money to race the way you need to race, to be real competitive. Schumacher has his own money. He can afford to do that, and good for him. Look at Kalitta: He spends like a sailor on leave! I seriously doubt whether their sponsors bring enough money to make a profit. Other guys are taking money out of their own pockets, whether they can afford it or not. You get hooked. It's always been that way. You're a star, you get that certain high by smoking off the guy next to you with your last dollar, and you lose sight of what you're spending. Been there, done that: We lost a lot of money on the Skytel deal. Way back when the Mattel program ended, McEwen put us together with Carefree Gum. All we got that whole year was chewing gum! At the end of it, I asked him, 'Ya got any more bright ideas?' We both kept going, though."

10/18..."I can start and rebuild any of the old cars, but I don't know anything about this last one," he says. "Just look at those hoses and all that computer stuff. One is a Piper Cub; the other one's a 747!"

Reminded that his previous retirement lasted all of one season, Don says the difference this time is age. "The Pepsi/Wendy's deal ran out in 1985," he explains. "I was burnt out, Bob Brandt was burnt out. We'd won championships, we were working our asses off, and I didn't have the money. I was also 25 years younger, and you just think differently. I was still full of piss and vinegar. It killed me, being out of it. When I'd watch racing on TV, I'd think about how much I had it made-about how the success I'd had was nothing to be taken for granted. I'd had a tremendous opportunity in life, and I still had all this time in front of me. I said, 'Man, I'm gonna get back in this thing and make a go of it,' so I did. I got Skoal Bandit to back that Funny Car, and U.S. Tobacco stayed with me for 23 years until they got bought by Philip Morris. On top of that, the tobacco laws had changed by last year, and the economy sucked.

14/18Is this the world's greatest hobby shop, or what? Snake Racing was among the first drag race teams with a purpose-built facility capable of hosting complete Top Fuel and AA/Funny Car operations, simultaneously. Even its respective tractors and trailers fit inside.

"We worked extremely hard to put together another deal for this year. We called everybody. I asked Reggie Jackson to speak to George Steinbrenner. I think the only person we didn't talk to was the president of the United States, and we were trying. Lynn, Donna, and I could've cut back and still run really well, but not without taking a lot of money out of the company to do it. This time, we decided to just stop. We quit. The reason I always mention the money is, when you come from not having any, you don't want to go back. It's not just me; it's my wife and daughter, their future. You have to think about all that."

Not many pro racers active as recently as 2009 were burning nitro even before NHRA's fuel ban ended in 1963. By then, Don had already won the biggest fuel race of them all, the Bakersfield March Meet in 1962, and was dominating the West in the Greer, Black & Prudhomme fueler. Who better to ask when and how things went wrong for drag racing, and how he'd make them right?

15/18The next Funny Car undergoing Willie Wolter's period-correct treatment is the Cope car Ron Capps drove in 1996. Only original or period-correct parts will be installed.

"It happened about 60 years ago when they started running nitromethane," he says, laughing loudly. "What they learned back then is the more of it you can put in there, the more air you make, and the more spark you get, the bigger bomb you've got. Now, we've made the parts around it so much stronger that we've created this big bomb. It's not the NHRA's fault as much as the engineers who build these bombs. The problem isn't that they're going too fast; the problem is that they're blowing up too much expensive stuff. We're losing guys who don't have the money and other guys who are running out of money.

"The NHRA is a great sanctioning body, but it's there more for safety. They've been able to keep a pretty good handle on that, but not on the technology because they're not engineers. It got away from them. I don't think they have the know-how to fix it. I'm not sure I have the know-how, and I've been doing it all my life. I'm not sure it can be fixed, but I'd start by pulling out fuel and air and one of these 44-amp magnetos, which wouldn't cost everyone a whole lot. You can't afford to make any huge changes redesigning the engines because there's too much invested in them. It's easy to say, 'Well, just change the cubic inches.' But now we're throwing away all our crankshafts, all our blowers. I'd be monitoring everyone's computer data, checking everyone's fuel pumps and blowers, confiscating and measuring the parts, like NASCAR does. NASCAR has its own tech facility that can invent whole cars, and it enforces the rules. The NHRA has always worked by the seat of its pants, by asking opinions from people. They all have different answers, and they argue, and PRO [Professional Racers Organization] has to get involved. NHRA needs to get tech people who really understand it and its own facility to work on stuff.

"I think going to 1,000 feet was the best thing they ever did," he adds. "But we'd be blowin' 'em up if we had 60-foot races. Now they're running 325 in 1,000 feet, so there you are. It's just the nature of the beast. I don't think they'll ever go back to the quarter-mile. That extra 320 feet is a big deal for the parts and for a driver trying to stop a car. Austin Coil said that if you have a death wish, you should run a quarter-mile. The new people coming to the track don't know the difference. They want to be entertained, to see a show. Anything more than 300 mph is plenty fast for them."

Asked to name the single biggest change he's noticed in himself since formally retiring in January, he replies instantly: "The headache! I'm talking about an actual, constant, tension headache. You go to bed with it every night, you wake up with it, you're poppin' Advil all the time. I feel as if I've had cataracts removed-like they peeled 'em off and the sky is bluer and the trees are greener. Is that unbelievable? I wake up in my bedroom in the morning, and it's like being on vacation. It's peaceful, very peaceful.

"People ask me if I'm coming back next year, and I say, 'I'd be 70 years old!' I wish I knew what I wanted to do next. We all need things that hold our interest, that keep us motivated and happy. I'm just chillin' right now. Lynn and I are gonna take our first real vacation in 10, 12 years. I've got my old cars. I run with the dogs. I'm not going to stay away from racing. I don't want to run a nostalgia car, but I sure enjoy watching them. I've always been fascinated by Formula 1. Before TiVo, I was one of those guys who'd get up at 3 in the morning to watch a race on the other side of the world. Chip Ganassi is a good friend, so I might do something with IndyCars. I don't read National Dragster, but I read F1 magazine. Isn't that strange? I may wake up next week or next month and go, 'Jeez, I really want to do this and that,' but it won't be drag racing."